In the tradition of The Things They Carried and Redeployment, a short story collection from a U.S. Navy veteran who completed five combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan — a remarkable portrait of the absurdity and poetry that define life in the most clandestine circles of modern warfare.
A mesmerizing debut collection that reveals what it's like to be a member of an elite special operations team, where missions take place behind night vision, ancient credos, and layers of secrecy. Moving between settings at home and abroad, in vivid language that reflects the wonder and discontent of war, Mackin draws the reader into a series of surreal, unsettling, and deeply human episodes. Told without a trace of bravado, and with a keen, Barry Hannah-like sense of the absurd, Mackin manages to capture the tragedy and heroism, degradation and exultation in the smallest details of war.

The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction honors an exceptionally talented fiction writer whose work — a first novel or collection of short stories — represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise of a second work of literary fiction. The award is accompanied by a $25,000 cash prize intended to permit the winner significant time and resources with which to pursue a subsequent work of fiction.